Selfies and TearsThere was a poignant irony to a viral video of a tourist falling into the water in Venice while taking a selfie.

The “Queen of the Adriatic” – one of the Italian city’s nicknames – is sinking. High tides and winds caused the November deluges that covered 80 percent of the city during a so-called “acqua alta,” or “high water,” that was six feet higher than usual. But the city was especially vulnerable. As the Conversation explained, its ancient foundations are collapsing slowly while the sea levels are rising steadily due to climate change.

Venice already had been working on a massive sea barrier to halt the onslaughts of water, but the Art Newspaper noted that the city hasn’t completed the project even after spending $6.6 billion on it over the past 16 years.

Accordingly, Italians terrified over their city disappearing under the waves understandably blame government negligence, incompetence, corruption and inaction for their woes, the Local wrote. “Venetians have just endured a deep wound,” an activist told Agence France-Presse. “The flooding … brought this city to its knees and revealed its extreme fragility to the world.”

Other locals worried about how flooding would push out the few remaining residents of central Venice. Life on the lagoon and amid the canals can be hard enough in normal times. Natural disasters make some want to give up entirely. NBC News wrote about how only 53,000 people live in the city now, compared to more than 120,000 in 1966, when another big flood struck.

A particular target of some Venetians’ ire were the cruise ships that they say have been eroding their buildings’ foundations. The Telegraph dismissed that idea. But the cruise ships do unleash millions of visitors – 32,000 a day – that critics quoted by CNN said have contributed to “overtourism” that has driven up the cost of living and indirectly forced natives out.

Venice has already taken some steps to restrict tourism by instituting an ‘entrance fee’ to the city, restricting the numbers of visitors on certain days and diverting some cruise ships to a nearby port. But millions still come.

The Weather Channel had some nice footage of life amid the flooding. It strikes one immediately how the tourist industry perseveres in Venice despite the natural disaster, with travelers walking on ramps above the waterline. St. Mark’s Square is a lake, the water smells of sewage, yet folks are sightseeing in rubber boots.

The Washington Post contrasted the tourists taking selfies with the residents in tears. “The toll of repeated inundation is mounting. … Life in one of the world’s most improbable and spellbinding cities is becoming unviable,” wrote the newspaper.

Desperately beautiful, Venice hopefully won’t turn out to be too precious to save.

LOL! The highest a Mountain can grow before gravitational forces start breaking it down, is 30,000 feet. The deepest the Ocean can get before it starts compressing the water on the bottom of the ocean back into the earth is 30,000 feet.